Kvetcher in the Rye
Monday, February 1, 2010
by Greg Palast for Op-Ed News
In the sixth grade, the Boys' Vice-Principal threatened to suspend me from school unless I stopped carrying around The Catcher in the Rye I think because it had the word "fuck" in it. Since the Boys' Vice-Principal hadn't read the book - and I don't think he'd ever read any book - he couldn't tell me why.
But Mrs. Gordon was cool. She let me keep the book at my desk and read it at recess as long as I kept a brown wrapper over the cover.
I think J.D. Salinger would have liked Mrs. Gordon. She wanted to save me from the world's vice-principals, the guys who wanted to train you in obedience to idiots and introduce you the adult world of fear and punishment. Mrs. Gordon wanted to protect the need of a child to run free.
That's, of course, how the word fuck got into Salinger's book. For the 5% of you who haven't read it, the main character of the book, Holden Caulfield, tries to erase the f-word off the wall of a New York City school. He doesn't want little kids like his sister Phoebe to see it, that somehow it would trigger an irreversible loss of her childhood innocence:
I thought Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them—all cockeyed, naturally—what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days.
Which is where the title came from. Salinger's Caulfield, pushed to the edge of his own youth and directed to prepare himself for the job market, could see for himself only one career: as a catcher in the rye. He imagined a bunch of kids playing away happily in a rye field, but a field on a cliff's-edge. Every time a child, lost in their game, would drift toward the edge, Caulfield's job would be to catch them before they fell.
Any other job would just turn you into a "phony," that is, an adult. All adults were phonies, even the nice ones, who took jobs they hated, taught textbooks and catechisms they didn't believe and lived lives of self-inflicted disappointments, while pretending it was all OK. Then with phony grins, they'd demand that you join their painful parade of delusion and decay.
Nearly half a century after I covered up Salinger's book in a carefully folded brown wrapper, I thought I'd read it to my twins. They were now eleven, in the 6th grade.
But I couldn't. In his 1956 book, Salinger had railed against a post-war world of boys in school blazers trying to get to "first base" with their steady dates. America itself was an adolescent, and despite the police beatings of marchers in Alabama, despite the "drop, tuck and don't look at the flash!" drills we did weekly in Mrs. Gordon's class to prepare for the Russian nuclear attack, America was still weirdly, optimistically child-like.
We knew then that the world could only get better: we would go to the moon and eventually, vacation there. JFK announced the Alliance for Progress and poverty would end in Appalachia; and Paul McCartney wanted to hold our hand. Every nasty meanie, like the police in Selma, was met by a legion of victorious innocents led by Martin Luther King. So we all held hands in a circle while Pete Seeger strummed "We shall overcome." Everyone would get a scholarship; and we really, truly believed we would overcome.
Even the social critics - Allen Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac - were just big, mischievous kids.
Yes, there were a bunch of old phonies like Joe McCarthy and the Boys' Vice-Principal, but their days were numbered.
Then we fell over the cliff.
A bullet through the skull replaced Kennedy with Nixon. We shall overcome was replaced with the vicious "Southern Strategy;" the Cold War exploded in hot jungles; then came the idiot wasteland of the regimes of Ford and Carter and Reagan and Clinton and Bushes, a degenerative march as the machine of America rusted and died.
And here we are today, begging for spare parts from China and my daughter glued to YouTube videos of Lady Ga-Ga's crotch, and my son slicing off a cop's head in Grand Theft Auto and a President, telegenic and painfully hollow, playing the lost and ineffectual shepherd over an electorate divided between the terrified and the greedy. In place of prophets, we are offered a caravan of kvetching clowns piling out of the Volkswagen on MSNBC.
There's no way to wipe the fuck off this smeared planet. I'm supposed to try. I'm an investigative reporter, meaning I have a professional commitment to the childish belief that if I shout loud enough, I can warn people away from the cliff's edge.
Well, it's better than a real job, but no less "phony," no less of a petty illusion.
I'm holding this book, the brown wrapper lost who the hell knows when, and I know it would just be laughable, inscrutably ancient to those wisened, worldly children of mine.
I've put it back on my shelf.
You stand on the cliff edge and there's no one left to catch.
Jerome David Salinger 1919-2010.
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, is a Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for investigative reporting. Sign up for Greg Palast's investigative reports at www.GregPalast.com.
Print This Post
Suck it up, Greg! You do great work. You are no phony. I hope you see the value in reading that book to your twins and in answering any questions they may have about it. You seem to understand what has changed since it was written, therefore, you should be able to help them understand as well.
I'm going to push my 12yo son to read "A People's History" by Howard Zinn. I will also be getting the "Young People's History" book for my 9yo son. It's important to trust an empower the next generation and to encourage them to learn about the class war.
Good luck and keep up the great work!
you caught me
Dear Mr. Investigative reporter Palast,
Do not despair, do not lament and do not give up. There are a few who have yet to go over the edge, and your services are both respected and desperately needed.
And go ahead and read/speak to your worldly kids - they'll listen. As will mine.
Thank you.
As I have two children and you, Greg, have more it would seem you have more to be kvetching about. But so much for pettiness.
I'll be 56 in March. I remember when my one year younger sister told me (oh, some 15 or so years ago) when I was kvetching over raising my own girls: "one thing I've realized is when we lose our childish innocence it becomes the one thing we seek most desperately to regain the rest of our life as adults." As I had been struggling through philosophical and other descriptions to phrase this perception myself at the time, her statement to me was quite simply sage.
If we do not care enough to preserve what is true of this innocence -- the natural love, identity and sincerity fostered there -- then we are doomed to "Just the facts, Ma'am" of its very demise.
If to love is truly the highest challenge of intellect then we may need to busy ourselves forgiving to unclog our own channels of perception and wisdom. How else will we honestly invigorate and succeed in turning this mess around and enlightening others?
But to your point, Greg. If not for a clear understanding of 'kvetch' and an extrapolation of its demeanor in such a mindset, there would be a darker hopelessness being promoted in this essay.
I continue to hope and work otherwise.
Thank you, J.D.S.
Thank you, Greg.
This speech was given Saturday, October 24, 2009 and I have found it most illustrating and informative:
http://essentialdissent.blogspot.com/2009/10/chris-hedges-empire-of-illusion-part-1.html
As I read this, the tears streamed down my face, unwanted and uninvited, for someone saying what I have felt for so long but can never put into words.
Yeah, I remember when everything was getting better. All the old reactionaries and young fogeys being put in their place. Didn't they have the last laugh? I hope this isn't our default mode.
Salinger was correct in that we had a champion phony at the helm in the UK. Funny how his name even rhymes with phony.
But chin up, Greg. How else are your kids going to rebel against their parents?
Sir, I thank you for reminding me of the reason I was in journalism for so long, and the probable reason I finally left the business to drive a tractor trailer rig back and forth across the USA. It was safer, and a lot less discouraging.
Someone posted this on my Facebook. I am among the 5% that never read the book but is it any less different today? While what children are exposed to may seem excessive look at what the PC police have done? You hear fuck everywhere but the word nigger is a no no. And we all know how common that word was in 1956. My suggestion is to read it to your kids. Tell them your story and explain how culture has evolved. How we try to be more respectful but do not dodge the difficult subjects. Yes, the 50's may have been a time of innocence but more so a time of ignorance. To know where we are going it is important to know where we've been.
Stunning. Mr. Palast your essay is absolutely stunning, powerful, and hauntingly important, and is the best thing I've read around Salinger's passing. Many thanks to you, for continuing to shout--with brilliance, passion, wisdom, and humanity--even as we continue to go over the cliff. We all may indeed end up falling, but some of us (thanks in part to you) will retain wisdom on the way down.
Loved your column and yes, I guess I am old if I can relate to your comments. However, although I am part of the electorate, I am neither "terrified nor greedy" as you wrote. I am one of many out here who is an unemployed college graduate, who sees collapse on various levels at hand, and who wishes she had more practical skills to survive the future. There is however still fire in the belly, just a tad more belly than in years past. Take care.
Greg:
RE:
"And here we are today, begging for spare parts from China and my daughter glued to YouTube videos of Lady Ga-Ga's crotch, and my son slicing off a cop's head in Grand Theft Auto and..."
My kids know better than that and so do the vast majority of their friends. I hope you didn't offend yours. Maybe they don't care. I hope not.
Salinger would have been proud of your tribute. Your words always are so true. When I was in Junior High in the late 60s I got sent to the dean's office for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance. I felt the words, "truth and justice for all" were a lie. I almost choked everytime I said them. Here I am in my 50s still fighting lies and injustice in my own way by telling the truth. You have been an inspiration to me. The justice system in Alaska was used to try to destroy me. I have healed by writing the truth about not just my case which compared to other cases of injustice is small. Thank you for helping me learn to examine situations for the real story behind them and the ability to read between the lines.
don't forget the bullets that killed r. kennedy, mlk and malcolm x....
To me, this article reflects an intellectually and emotionally stunted perspective -- that life was wonderful when we were young and that life is hopelessly messed up today. Many people indulge in this point of view. It's cheap. There was nothing childlike about the struggles of the civil rights movement nor about the nuclear arms race. I remember growing up in the 50's. Progress when it does happen can happen slowly. Obama represents that progress (and he is deep not hollow). Progress includes compromise and frustrations. It's a human failing that we are distracted by the imperfect, while we express too little appreciation of the good. Note that, to make your point, you almost imply that your own children are degenerate for watching Lady Ga-Ga etc. I don't think you believe that in any way. What made the past childlike was the children in it. Those children were no better than children are today. As adults we owe it to today's children to see the world through their eyes. They believe the world can be good, as they are, and they are right.
Oh Mr. Palast! I know it's hard. But if YOU give up, how can the rest of us go on?
I'm reading Upton Sinclair's "OIL!" and it is surely a book for all ages.
It's been this grim for at least a century but the ones who still have brains not fried by the constant propaganda and this slick president MUST remain stalwart, if only to help each other.
Best to you, sir.
'Any other job would just turn you into a "phony," that is, an adult. All adults were phonies, even the nice ones, who took jobs they hated, taught textbooks and catechisms they didn't believe and lived lives of self-inflicted disappointments, while pretending it was all OK. Then with phony grins, they'd demand that you join their painful parade of delusion and decay.'
Thanks Greg. Another great one.
It may look like there's no one left to catch, but you can't always tell. There is another cliff to avoid - the one on the dark edge of futility and despair. When I look around and see the hoards hurtling toward destruction, when I also say, "hey, watch out for that cliff!" and I stand in despair, unable to stop them from the self-enslavement, from the insane rush to oblivion... it is voices like yours that help me stay safe from that other abyss. Safer from the maw of futility and the awful realization that it is tough work to "save" those who have no stomach for living outside the lie. It's tough work for sure, and it's helpful to know we have company.
So chin up, Bucky, and keep trudging. You just might be saving more than you know.
Hey Greg!
Cheer up man! Change will come. The Vietnamese kicked us out of their country. The Afghanistan'ese will do the same, it's not called the death of Empires for no reason. The Iraqis will also be removing us as well. History does not move forward in a straight line. The current state of affairs is unsustainable, 5% of the world population cannot continue to consume 36% of the resources. Which means it will change because it has to. Knowledge is power and it's spreading exponentially.
Greg, I read that book in high school a few generations later, and it did still inspired me. Inspired me to get a degree in psychology, so I could be one of those catchers (until I learned that most shrinks were "phonies", so decided to be an expert phony: a statistician).
As Hunter said, that wave did crest and fall back. But the wave can crest again. It's in the air. Something is going to break. I'm not in for hope. I'm in for trying to make change happen.
And as long as I see people like Greg, Amy Goodman, Bill Moyers, Laura Flanders, Matt Taibbi, Robert Newman, Jello Biafra, I have a little...faith? I don't know. I'm not a writer, but we need all the voices we can get...
Keep shouting Greg!
There are still many of us listening.
We can't let the assholes get us down!
I'm torn between,
"There's no way to wipe the fuck off this smeared planet. I'm supposed to try. I'm an investigative reporter, meaning I have a professional commitment to the childish belief that if I shout loud enough, I can warn people away from the cliff's edge.",
and Karl Leubas post:
"Sir, I thank you for reminding me of the reason I was in journalism for so long, and the probable reason I finally left the business to drive a tractor trailer rig back and forth across the USA. It was safer, and a lot less discouraging."
We all seem to be going over the cliff and we are too programed to avoid it. "Soldier on! Things are better once we get past this little blip in the economy."
We are all the children, or Thelma and Louise, and the cliff needs to fulfill it's purpose, I don't think anyone can catch us now.
"Well, it's better than a real job, but no less "phony," no less of a
petty illusion."
Not true, man! Don't let 'em get ya down Greg! I read your emails.
I listen to you and Dennis Bernstein on Flashpoints. I'm a full time
activist going door-to-door in America, another "phony" I guess. But if
that's being phony, bring on the alternate phony universe!
Thanks for your column, Greg! If there is a way to 'wipe the fuck off this smeared planet,' you are well on your way to discovering it.
V Brownlee is right- I cried. Someone DOES understand (not any one of my 81 FB friends- all as old as you and me, Greg - no one seemed to care at all when J.D. Salinger died..) so, thanks!
William Holden. Joan Caulfield. Dear Ruth, Dear Baby, and ? Salinger was obsessed with the worst movies ever made.
The world has always been like this. It is not for you to keep anyone from going over the edge. We all are instruments for we-know-not-what. Just do what you are called to do. Do it unselfishly and do it well. Out of the chaos will come new growth. And the you are doing exactly what needs to be done to make sure it is watered.
Keep Shouting Greg!
There are still many of us listening.
And Thank You...
Greg, your voice rings a clear and distinctive bell. I know you won't silence it, and neither will I silence mine. Thanks so much.
Greg, I was right there with you until the '50s pastoral started. Come on, man -- there's nothing more phony than the notion that the world's bright and wonderful youth just happened to coincide with your own. Any teenager will smell that BS immediately. If anyone ever did capture that adolescent American spirit you're talking about, it was Walt Whitman -- and you know what he had to say about nostalgia?
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Go forth.
Christoher Hitchens doesn't like Nafeez...because Gore Vidal has praised him in the past.
Ahmed's rather good response to Hitchens below. Admittedly, I think Ahmed's theory on Peak Oil is the opposite to that of a certain Mr. Palast, but his work on 9/11 is highly regarded. He gives a mention to Greg's work here, by the way:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/hitchens-has-no-clothes-a-response-to-lsquovidal-locorsquo-1891507.html
More links here. Including Hitchens' laughable response to Ahmed's letter to Vanity Fair. Hitchens certainly has a lot of vanity but no fairness.
http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2010/02/christopher-hitchens-on-gore-vidal-and.html#links
Hey Greg,
You helped save me, and I'm eternally grateful, though I know how you feel. Best of luck, and keep up the good work.
It seems like it's a lot easier to save the world than to save your own kids, I know, I'm a grandma. But don't give up on either, they are both important. Kids are the most important, because then it's their job to save the world, and their own kids, and they can't do it without you.
Don't jump, Greg! Remember the story of the person on the beach, throwing stranded starfish back into the sea? Someone said "Why try? You cannot possibly save them all!" "Well," replied the person, "I saved This one, and now This one, and this one..."
Some will run over the cliff no matter what. Your words have caught me more than once, and I am inspired by your perseverance in exposing the vultures in our midst. Things would be much worse without some who resist the darkness; it has always been so, throughout time. Hold your torch high and keep your pitchfork sharp!
Incredibly interesting developments in Turkey and Iran. The words 'Operation Gladio' and 'Strategy of Tension' come to mind!
Turkey:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/8531486.stm
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/02/2010223141353497258.html
Iran:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/02/2010223164715638529.html
Greg
"Catcher" is a perfect book. So are "The Great Gatsby " and "Huckleberry Finn" though it did get more "phony" —appropriately so—when Mark Twain put Tom Sawyer in it at the end. Huck was real and Tom Sawyer WAS phony and a big reason why Huck "lit out for the territories. They wanted to civilize me, and I been there before."
I'm 78. My parents voted for FDR four times, though they were not working class My mother quit her job—on a Newspaper in New York City—, because she felt it was not right for two people in the same household to have full-time employment during a depression. FDIC. Social Security and the G I Bill are three of the ever-dwindling supports that are preventing the total collapse of our society. In other words, I grew up believing, with Hammurabi that the most important function of government was to protect the weak from the strong. So I have lived to watch the government become "Robin Hood in reverse." We sacrifice the many for the few.
I've sent you small amounts of money in the past, because I like what you say and how you say it.
I might send more, but I'm no match for the Corporate America. I'm afraid Ralph Nader's new book,
"Only the Super Rich Can Save Us Now" expresses a depressing truth, and our leading poet often mirrors a mood I have often given in to:
"and I don't know why, I should even care.
It's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there."
BOB DYLAN
George Kuhn
DEAREST MR. PALAST -
IF YOU DO NOT READ CATCHER IN THE RYE TO YOUR KIDS, I WILL STOP BELIEVING IN YOU MR. SANTA CAUSE! PLEASE GET YOUR BUTT TO THAT SHELF RIGHT NOW AND ALL OF YOU READ IT TOGETHER!!!!!!!!!! NOWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THE TIBETANS BELIEVE A NEW WORLD IS BEING BORN, AND BIRTH IS BLOODY BUT WORTH IT, AND JD SALINGER IS ONE OF THE FINE GREAT THREADS THAT HAS HELD IT ALL TOGETHER IN READINESS FOR THAT BIRTH! JUST BECAUSE YOU MIGHT NOT LIVE TO SEE IT DOESN'T MEAN IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN, EBENEZER SCROOGE!
DON'T PLAY THE PHONY CENSORSHIP GAME AND DEPRIVE YOUR KIDS OF THE CHANCE TO LATER BECOME THE PARENTS YOU ARE TO THEM, AND THE GREAT JOURNALIST YOU ARE TO US! GET THEE TO A BOOKSHELF! NOWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!
Enlightening article. You are read here in Japan, even in English. Your book THE BEST DEMOCRACY... is seldom on the library shelf very long, at least where I live. It is like a contemporary voice of the enlightened man in Plato's REPUBLIC running outside the cave trying to convince people that their truths are an illusion, something I have tried to do in my own novel THE TOUCH OF OUR SLEEVES, hoping all the time that I am not in some kind of counter-illusion. I'm getting old and sometimes I wonder..., so I find your efforts encouraging as I try to publish my new translation here. Bekka Jion